As prize money and the number of events as well as their impacts have increased, some anglers have expressed the need for increased regulation of tournaments and their participants. Fishing tournaments in Texas are not regulated nor are there different fishing regulations for tournament and non-tournament anglers. Much is known about those that participate in particular fishing tournaments in terms of their fishing motivations, attitudes, and socio-demographic characteristics. However, while no studies were conducted at the angler population level to understand their overall preferences for tournament opportunities that are currently provided or that could be provided, such a study, if undertaken, would likely use a traditional opinion measurement approach or revealed preference methods. This would yield inconsequential insight to the relative importance of each of the options or the tradeoffs anglers were willing to make when viewing tournament options jointly. Alternatively, a stated preference discrete choice model makes use of hypothetical scenarios to simulate participation choices and understand preferences. Study objectives were to better understand the problems involved in saltwater fishing tournaments, to identify tournament and non-tournament angler preferences for possible fishing regulations, and to examine within group differences in attitudes, opinions, and preferences regarding salt water tournament issues.

Four tournament policy selection characteristics were: (1) promotion of catch and release, (2) bait restrictions, (3) whether a percentage of the tournament entrance fee goes to support fishery management activities, and (4) whether a tournament is a non-profit or profit-making venture. Three general expectation attributes were also inserted: (5) tournament size, (6) travel cost per day, and (7) whether or not a tournament is family friendly. A fractional factorial design was used to generate a manageable number of 56 choice sets. The choice sets were then divided into seven blocks of eight paired choice sets using blocking. We sent a mail questionnaire in the summer of 200 and about 795 anglers responded for an effective response rate of 53% using a modified Dillman Design Survey Method.

Given the consumer’s choice model that individuals make choices that lead to the highest utility, utility or satisfaction can be estimated using the indirect utility function, which is comprised of a deterministic component and a random error component. Based on a rational assumption, that an angler will prefer an alternative of one fishing trip over another when the utility of the first is greater than the second, we used the conditional logit to estimate the preference models. Because of a concern about the satisfaction of the independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) property, we estimated three different models to mitigate the IIA problem by taking into account the interaction effects of individual specific variables. 

• Respondents were older, had higher incomes, and were more skilled than non-respondents. No significant differences were detected between these two groups for other important variables (e.g., total fishing days, total cost spent for a fishing trip).

• All effects of the primary attributes were statistically significant (p < 0.05). In general, most attributes had the expected signs except for promotion of catch and release and the one where part of the tournament entrance fee was to go to the agency to support fishery management costs.

• For interaction effects, male anglers and younger anglers were more likely to participate in fishing tournaments compared to female and older anglers. Additionally, anglers with higher household incomes and who have participated in tournament fishing previously were more likely to indicate that they participate in fishing tournaments.

• The implicit values using the marginal rate of substitution between the attribute in question and trip cost indicated that anglers, with all other attributes remaining the same (i.e., ceteris paribus), were willing to pay $67 in support of the option, “catch-and-release restrictions promoted” from the option of “catch-and-release restrictions not promoted” and $86 in support of “tournaments held only by non-profit organizations” from the option of “tournaments held by profit-making business”. Further, they were willing to pay about $2 to have 10 tournament participants less in their event ignoring the presence of other effects.

• Results of scenario analysis indicate that Scenario 1 with no management interventions was not most preferred. Nevertheless, anglers most preferred Scenario 3 (the conservation-oriented option) with a predicted probability of 31.3% and WTP of $162. Overall, management scenarios with certain degrees of management intervention were generally more favored than the status quo situation with no management interventions.

Study results generally indicated a certain degree of support for management interventions mainly due to concerns with possible tournament-induced negative impacts. Although respondents also showed their reluctance to adopt other management-related options, these results confirmed that anglers likely take into account increasing concerns about sustainability of fish stocks and potential conflicts between tournament and non-tournament users. Additionally, while there were more restrictive management-related regulations included in Scenarios 3 and 5, the high predicted probabilities and WTP for these scenarios showed their willingness to accept stricter management interventions.